The present disclosure relates to managing an enterprise architecture, and more specifically, to modeling and analyzing the architecture.
Current Enterprise Architecture Management Frameworks such as TOGAF and Zachman cater to information technology (IT) managers (e.g., a Chief Information Officer (CIO)) who need to provide an IT solution to meet their business needs. However, when a CIO attempts to select off-the-shelf technology (e.g., software, hardware, or composite solution), they encounter difficulty matching offered capabilities of the technology with their business needs. One reason for this difficulty is a lack of traceability of offered capabilities to needs and traceability of requirements to technology.
There are some software architecture modeling tools that focus on producing software applications that satisfy some of an Enterprise's business needs, e.g., a Business Architecture. But even with such tools, a Service Engineer or Implementation Engineer typically manually constructs a specific solution according to an existing business architecture. The level of abstraction for a Business Architecture produces a different language (i.e., different terminology) and different artifacts as compared to a software design (or modeling) language and its artifacts. Furthermore, the terminology and artifacts of an implementation solution differ as well. Thus, there are three different domains, or abstraction levels, that have three different modeling environments and nomenclature. Because users in each of the three domains employ their own tools, it is difficult without intensive human interpretation and labor to decide which capability is implemented in which technology and the order that such an implementation should be accomplished. In other words, transforming business goals into an architecture roadmap for a solution is difficult.